Caption: Thomas Watson, assistant to Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone. The first words spoken over a telephone system were "Mr Watson, come here, I want to see you.", said by Bell to his colleague on 10th March 1876. Watson then went to see Bell to inform him that he had heard the message. Watson (born 1854) left Bell in 1881, and became a ship builder, and then a geological prospector. At the age of 56, he became an actor- director of Shakespeare. In this photograph he is dressed as the clerk in The Merchant of Venice.